Stanley said he was attracted to the position in Oshkosh due to the department's motto, "Be Nice."

"That really resonated with me, and it caused me to start researching the department more to find out if that was really one of their values," Stanley said. "It became clear to me that it was."

Stanley brings over two decades of experience to the role and has worked in various positions — everything from battalion chief to hazardous materials technician.

"It's a tough career because you see people when they're having the worst days of their lives. And to see people struggle and to see what can happen to people — whether it's a traumatic accident or dying of natural causes or seeing somebody lose their home and their belongings and things that are important to them — you see people suffer," he said. "That's a lot more difficult than, I think, most of us expect. To see that and the cumulative effect of seeing our fellow society members suffer — it's pretty tough."

Stanley said he applies lessons he learned on his first day on the job over 20 years ago. He still remembers his first call and took notes after he returned home that day.

"The first call I went on wasn't a five-alarm fire or something that most people would think would be glamorous," he said. "It was a guy who'd had too much to drink in the middle of the day and fell in the bushes."

Stanley said he tries to remember how he felt that day in regards to the simple nature of the call — to help those who needed it.

"We didn't have hoses or ladders or the defibrillator and heart monitor. He just needed some help," Stanley said. "So one of the things that I wrote down was 'I hope 20-plus years from now, when you run your last call, that you'll have the same excitement and enthusiasm about helping as you did then.'"

Stanley is the first new Oshkosh fire chief in almost 18 years, and he said he's ready to meet with staff to learn about the role and more about the department.

"My short-term goals would be to learn — to find out what it is we do and why it is we do it and what's working. How did we get to the point where we've implemented that decision? What was the historical perspective?"

Stanley said one of his long-term focuses is community risk reduction — working to make sure the public is aware of risks and how to mitigate them and making sure the public doesn't just interact with firefighters during personal emergencies. He's excited to work to develop and implement programs to help meet that goal and said he's honored to work as chief in Oshkosh.

"It's been unbelievable," Stanley said. "I talked about what a daunting prospect it was to move from everything we've known and ever known to here. Just within the first few hours of being here we knew we were home."